When Justin Reinmuth first began teaching shop and electronics class at Gering High School in Nebraska in 2010, the shop activities were limited to soldering.

“We’re a tiny community. We just didn’t have the money,” Reinmuth recalled. Fast forward eight years and his one small class has grown to two and undergone a major technology makeover after he and his students entered the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow contest last year and won one of the three grand prizes, receiving a $150,000 award, which marked a new beginning for Gering High.

“Now we have state-of-the-art computer equipment and a laptop for every single high school student – all from Samsung,” said Reinmuth.

“The goal of the project was to help all communities preserve their most precious resource, water.

With our clothes increasingly made from synthetic materials and plastics, the engineering class at Gering felt this could be a positive step towards keeping foreign and unwanted plastics from entering into the water supply or our food products,” Reinmuth explained in the school’s project proposal.

Last year’s win was not only a technology windfall that helped propel the students’ Solve for Tomorrow project this year, but it also piqued many students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects and inspired them to get involved in engineering class as well as other academic endeavors.

It helped to drive the academic fervor and renewed energy in the school community.

In the past three years, Gering High School has become the winningest school in the decade-old Solve for Tomorrow competition.

From their grand-prize-winning idea three years ago to building a water filter for washing machines to prevent micro plastics from entering water sources in 2018 and their upgrade automatic wheelchair innovation in 2019, Gering High School students have virtually become a think tank for innovation.

Now, according to Reinmuth, six graduating seniors have chosen to pursue engineering degree in college.

“We went from barely having an electronics class due to lack of student interests to having two class blocks of engineering course and a wait list.

Winning the competition last year boosted students’ interest in STEM immensely,” Reinmuth said.

The school now offers a variety of STEM classes such as autonomous robotics and computer-aided design to more than 140 students interested in learning these critical skills, and became the first class-B school in Nebraska to offer a complete STEM career pathway and was awarded a $103,000 grant by the Nebraska governor for implementing a STEM curriculum in the Jr. High School.

Just last year they also finished in the top 5 for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science.

Reinmuth and his students expect that they will also continue to compete in Solve for Tomorrow competitions and they’re motivated to find new innovations that will help their community and contribute to good causes.